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This chapter explores challenges associated with the use of Europeanization as an explanatory variable in accounting for domestic institutional and policy developments. It covers a range of issues, including the conceptual and empirical relationship between Europeanization and globalization. This is an important and in many ways analytically prior task, for no other reason than that one cannot hope to assess accurately the extent of Europeanization and its implications if one cannot distinguish it from other large-scale processes at work in contemporary Europe. Domestic systems are subject to...

This chapter explores challenges associated with the use of Europeanization as an explanatory variable in accounting for domestic institutional and policy developments. It covers a range of issues, including the conceptual and empirical relationship between Europeanization and globalization. This is an important and in many ways analytically prior task, for no other reason than that one cannot hope to assess accurately the extent of Europeanization and its implications if one cannot distinguish it from other large-scale processes at work in contemporary Europe. Domestic systems are subject to a vast range of causal forces both endogenous and exogenous, and selecting just out – in this case, Europeanization – for close, careful examination presupposes an ability to differentiate it conceptually and empirically. The chapter also presents a set of arguments supporting the basic methodological approach adopted by the contributors to this volume, which shuns a macro or aggregate perspective in favour of one premised on the wisdom and logic of parsing: specifically, taking articulated components of the domestic system – typically policies and/or institutions – and devising rigorous searches for the presence or absence of Europeanization.